The heart seeks God and wants peace
In the spiritual life, it’s easier to unmask and dismantle the objections against prayer that are brought up by our fallen world and fallen hearts. Arguments are easy to deal with and debate. Points are made, but counterpoints are given.
A far harder battle is the one that involves the disappointment of the heart. There is no argument or debate. The heart feels what it feels. It knows what it knows. And the hardest spiritual battle to fight is the battle against a heart that has been disappointed by prayer.
The heart can be disappointed with prayer for many reasons.
In struggles, heartbreaks, trials, or tribulations, the heart turned to God and asked for his blessings and protection. In spite of the prayers, bad things happened, loved ones were hurt, betrayal occurred, and nothing good was discernable. In conclusion, the wounded heart decided that prayer is a farce. It doesn’t help with anything.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes: “Finally, our battle has to confront what we experience as failure in prayer.”
In such moments, the heart doesn’t want to pray. It doesn’t want to talk about prayer. It doesn’t want to think, see, or be reminded of prayer in any way. The heart has been stripped of faith.
In addition, there are times in which the heart turns away from prayer because of dryness. The heart seeks God and wants peace. It asks for healing and rejuvenation. It desires to hear from God and know of his care, and yet there is only silence and presumed neglect. The Catechism rightly calls this “discouragement during periods of dryness.”
There are also moments in which the soul feels remorse over its distance from God. Such sorrow leads the soul to walk away from God. The Catechism identifies this as “sadness that, because we have ‘great possessions,’ we have not given all to the Lord.”
Likewise, there is also (again) the disappointment over prayer and a wounded ego. We turned to God, relied on him, trusted him, and we believe that he failed us. He didn’t come through. In such moments, the soul feels tricked and abandoned. The Catechism observes this as “disappointment over not being heard according to our own will; wounded pride, stiffened by the indignity that is ours as sinners.”
And then, there is the rebellion against the idea that prayer is an unmerited gift. The heart thinks it needs to earn prayer because a gift always has strings attached. The soul wants to do the work of prayer on its own. The Catechism notes that there is a “resistance to the idea that prayer is a free and unmerited gift; and so forth.”
Each of these different struggles and objections to prayer are grounded in a heart that has been hurt and disappointed by prayer. But the hurt and disappointment oftentimes hide another source, namely, our own pride.
We believe God should be a good business person and give some quid-pro-quo. We believe that we can control God and that he must do what we say and when we say it. We assert our will over his and expect him to go along with it.
We define prayer by our own autonomy and see it as a list of demands, rather than a loving union with God and a joyful surrender to his will, which knows all things and is the supreme good in, through, and above all things.
Due to the false or severely incomplete definition of prayer that we surround ourselves with, there is an overarching false belief and wayward conviction in our hearts that prayer is about getting what we want. It is the ultimate game in manipulation, since it involves manipulating and coercing even God.
The Catechism observes: “The conclusion is always the same: what good does it do to pray?”
The response is always the same. From Adam and Eve after the fall from grace, to Noah amidst the waves, to Abraham as he entered the Promised Land and waited for a son, to Moses on Mount Sinai, to King David as he confronted Goliath, and ultimately to the Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. The path of prayer is the path of humility.
The Catechism teaches: “To overcome these obstacles, we must battle to gain humility, trust, and perseverance.”
This way gives the answer to all the objections and hesitations to prayer. It is humility. It is acknowledging God’s greatness and accepting his will. This is the path of prayer.
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